Weddingbee Blog

To be honest, I don’t know all that much about the business of flying. I’ve been on a plane only a handful of times, none of which ever required booking a ticket for myself. So for someone who intends on flying multiple people to Hawaii, the learning curve is steep. But I’ll ride that wave.

We’ll start with a lessons-learned from my “experience” booking the flight to Oahu for our scouting trip. I’ll put the process in bulleted form for simplified reading, though it’ll probably still be confusing.

• Mr. Sewing and I for sure, were going. Then I thought it might be nice to take my parents too, as sort of an early 25th anniversary present. Not content at that, my parents decided they wanted my siblings to come as well. So, six people flying to Hawaii would not be so bad, eh?
• Well, my carrier of choice (Hawaiian) listed zero flights for the day after Christmas on their main website. Sold out? Mr. Sewing told me no, but the flight would have to be bought through an online travel agency since it was semi-late in the game.
• Screaming over crazy prices ensued. Did it really cost over 800 dollars to fly during a holiday? Apparently.

• After searching around a bit, I found the online travel agency with the best price. Mistake #1: I picked a flight with several connections and different carriers. I call this a mistake not only because it’s confusing, but we later had one of the “legs” cancel, only to screw up our arrival schedule by several hours. I realize this could happen even if you have a direct flight, but the more planes involved = higher probability of delays/cancellations.
• Mistake #2: I thought I could pay for it. Six $700 tickets adds up. Adds up further than my credit limit, actually. Although I had the cash ready and waiting in my debit account, apparently the online website did not accept anything but credit! Amazing. So I called Sewing-Dad, and had him pay for the tickets, which I later reimbursed him for.

Overall, I didn’t feel confident about that upcoming flight whatsoever. I felt like the whole thing could be canceled without warning. I definitely don’t want to repeat this process for the wedding.

Now, here’s the where the real fun starts.

For the wedding, I’ll need two separate flight plans.

Plan #1: Mr. Sewing and I

We’ll be flying to Hawaii with our guests - but instead of returning, we’ll be going to Japan for three weeks. Do we fly “triangle trip”? One-way to Hawaii, one-way to Japan, and another one-way back to the Bay area? Or do we get a round trip from the Bay Area to Hawaii, and another round trip from Hawaii to Japan? Also, Mr. Sew’s Dad offered to use his bajillion frequent flier miles to cover our trip from Hawaii to Japan, so we’ll need to take that into account, as well.

Plan #2: Immediate Family

My family will be flying to Hawaii around the same time we are. Now here’s the problem - they can’t decide on what day to come back. Until I get this vital piece of information, it’s a little hard to book a round trip flight for them. I was initially planning on buying all the tickets at the 330 day mark (which is the earliest you can book most airline flights), but this mark has come and gone (and prices have gone up a good $200 dollars…).

Tired of hassling my family members, we ultimately decided to leave them on the “do it yourself” plan. I’ll just have to reimburse them later, and hope hope hoooope they get a decent price.

Anyone else dealing with the nightmare of flight booking? When IS the best time to buy?